Next up? Curtis didn't feel like going back to the library just yet. While finishing off the young rats before they could grow up was tempting, one little bite might re-kindle the disease, and he didn't have any more Purify scrolls. There were two doors right here to investigate, after all. The first door shocked him by sheer simplicity - he just turned the handle firmly and it opened, no problem, and even the noise it made was fairly minor.
Better yet, it opened into a simple 10' square room with a couple shelves and 4 large storage barrels - and no signs of life. There was a faint smell of alcohol pervading the room. At the far right-hand corner was a manhole cover set into the floor. On the shelf was an orange-colored maintenance jumpsuit/coverall, and a matching hard hat. There was also an old gallon jug and some rubber tubing, both looking aged, but probably serviceable for short-term cautious use.
Turning to the barrels, two were sealed, one was empty, and the final one held an assortment of metal and wooden rods ranging from 2 to 4 feet in length - a few of which registered as weapons, with damage rating pop-ups like that of his dagger. The best was a 1" thick, 3' long metal rebar with a (club 2-5) damage rating. The alcohol smell came from the two sealed barrels.
As Curtis began stashing everything into his inventory, he started feeling strange - heavy, sluggish, massive. It looked like he had been wrong about how inventory worked - but what was the real answer? It certainly didn't feel as heavy as the same mass of stuff would be if carried in a backpack, and he couldn't feel a concentration of weight anywhere in particular - it was more like someone had turned gravity up a ways.
His best guess was that everything was still anchored to his body somehow, and he had to carry it all around whenever he wanted to move. So, he was going to have to prioritize. He put on the jumpsuit and hard hat - feeling a bit silly about it because he was still barefoot. He put the dagger into inventory and carried the "club" instead. And he took out all the metal and wood rods that were by far the heaviest items.
That sorted out (for now, at least), he turned to the barrels. It was fairly easy to simply bash open the small "bunghole" seals, and he was quickly able to smell the results. The first smelled like stale beer, bad, but not actually rotten or spoiled. The second was wine in somewhat the same state, from the fruity smell coming out of the barrel.
Since he had tubing right at hand, he sipped a bit of each, carefully. Yuck - weak rotgut. Nothing he'd WANT to drink, but it would probably keep him from dying of thirst any time soon. At least nothing bad happened, and his health ticked up to 7 as expected. Still, it wasn't good for much - maybe it would help with wound cleaning and prevent disease? He filled his empty vial with the wine, and half-filled the jug with beer, putting both in inventory.
Next, he turned his attention to the second door. While not as easy or quiet as the first door, this one also opened without serious issues - revealing a long 8' wide corridor extending over 30' before curving off to the right. It all seemed exceptionally clean, almost polished, but there was a slight fuzziness to the view, like hot air over a hot sunlit roadway - a shimmer of sorts. As he leaned in to get a closer look, he was enveloped in clear ooze - face first. Face stinging and eyes burning, he jerked his head back, but it was too late to get his whole body clear - something crudely glommed onto him.
Fortunately, one hand was still holding onto the doorway (the other held his club), and he was able to slowly pull himself out of the corridor, "-1", "-1" as his exposed skin started burning from the acid. Scrambling away as it (some huge clear mass) slowly oozed after him, continuing to try to coat him with its slime "-1", he grabbed his Healing potion from inventory and drank "-1" "+5". Getting lose, he ran for the other door and slammed it shut behind him. He took 1 more point of acid damage before washing it off with the beer.
His eyes burned from the acid in the face and his vision was slightly blurred, but he had enough sense to check that the door was latched and to start cleaning the acid off the jumpsuit, rebar, and hard hat with more beer. He might be smelling like a drunk, but at least his skin wouldn't be burning away.
Great, he thought, by the time I can leave here, I'll have no clue where the thing is. Best I can think of is just splash beer around ahead of me everywhere until I see it hit something. Could try to summon a monster with the scroll, but that's just asking for trouble. Or I could try looking under the manhole cover. Then again - I'm tired and hurt, but in a fairly secure place - maybe a nap is best for now.
Sleep didn't come easily, despite how tired he felt. As he tried to relax, it hit him that everyone he knew was probably going through similar challenges and torments. Of course, he considered, half of them probably WEREN'T - many would simply be hiding in their starting room, next to their mirror, waiting for it all to be over, or for rescue to come. They wouldn't have died, so the full impact wouldn't have hit them yet.
In fact, he thought, most people had probably simply stayed put. He pondered how many had even found the food and water in their inventories. Or they might be going the other direction, screaming and pounding on doors for help, disturbing who-knows-what creatures, or setting off traps. He tried to think of what various people he knew might do - how they would react. It really ran the whole spectrum - from entitled types who would be running around looking for "the authorities" or "management", to gamer geeks who might consider this their ultimate paradise, risks and all.
He thought of his own parents, his grandmother, his teenage brother and sister - would they adjust? It was hard to imagine what they'd do. He resolved, once he had escaped his current drama (or died of it), to look up all his family and friends on the leader board, if that sort of search was even possible.
On reflection, his brother Mark might be having the time of his life - he was always into computer gaming, and often stayed up late doing something he called "first person shooters", often online with his teenage friends. Gail, on the other hand, was entirely into the social scene and would probably be having a complete breakdown by now. He couldn't even guess what Gramma Vera and his parents might be doing - just thinking of them in a situation like this boggled his mind.
That was another aspect slowly wearing on him - the isolation. There was no one to talk to, to complain to, to brag to about his wins or seek solace from when he got damaged. He was a bit on a loner, so he had it better than most, he felt sure. Imagine how all the highly social people felt - alone and abandoned, with only monsters lurking. He wrestled with these issues as his health slowly improved, to 10, then to 12 - then he suddenly woke up, fully healed, not knowing how long it had been since he drifted off.
That was a new form of disorientation - time. No watch, no clock, even on the mirror or leader board - only his own subjective feeling of time passing. What he DID have was a sore back from sleeping on hard ground - most of it (now that he checked) was about an inch of packed dirt over sandstone just like the walls.
Curtis put his jumpsuit and hard hat back on, filled up his jug of beer, and set out to find his current nemesis. That turned out to be far easier than expected - it had barely moved, and beer-splatter showed it to be just inside the mirror room itself, only a few feet from the doorway where he had face-planted into it.
Splashing it furiously with beer from the jug, it slowly took shape in his vision, along with a pop-up "Crystal Ooze 40/40". The thing was massive, a rough cube about 5' on a side, with short, blobish arms with blunt ends, no hands. The beer created a faint frothing outline of the creature and (hopefully) would counteract some of its acidic effect. He quickly placed the empty jug back in inventory, got out his length of rebar, and started swinging wildly.
It worked! Well, mostly. It felt like hitting a pile of Jell-O, and splattered about the same, but the jumpsuit still protected him fairly well, and his rebar was longer than the short arms of the ooze. He wasn't getting "full damage" - it looked more like 1-3 per swing (half damage, maybe??), but he was making progress. When he had it down to about 10/40, he had taken only 2 damage from acidic splashes, but the beer outline was nearly gone and his tracking pop-up stopped working.
Curtis considered going back to refill the beer, but the slow smoking of the jumpsuit told him it would soon be useless, so he continued by feel - letting the impact of his swings guide him. As he took 3 more damage, he thought he could feel a change in the way the impacts felt and backed off, then rinsed himself quickly with the wine vial. After that, he checked the mirror - YES!!
Mundane Human - Curtis
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Class - Pitiful Rogue
Level 1 (94/100)
Health 9/15
He had taken it down! Not only that, but he was almost to level 2. What would "level-up" be like?
